Billy Pettit real disappointment

29 Jun 2007

...

  Has anyone ever built a spherical computer?
That'd be interesting...
 dead easy to move around, too :-)  
 "Give me a place to stand, and I'll move the world."  - Archimedes 
I beleive he asked for a long lever as well..

I've thought about this, and I don't beleive he could move the world
significantly. To exert enough force on the earth, he would have to have a
termenous mechancial advantage (I think I estiameted 10^9 times). And
since a lever doesn't increase energy, he'd have to move his hand through 
10^19 times the distance the earth moved. Or 1 million metres to move the 
earth 1mm. 

Maybe first-year physics students should be asked to commoent on 
Archimedes' statement :-)

-tony

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Billy Pettit real disappointment